Final Fantasy VII: A SOLDIER's Sister
by MrsGrizzley
Summary: Maracae, younger sister to the greatest SOLDIER ever, joins forces with Cloud and Avalanche to hunt down and defeat her brother, even though she still loves him desperately. Story will follow the events of the game, as closely as the author can manage.
1. Beginnings

This is a story I wasn't certain I was going to be able to write. Heck, I'm still not certain I'm going to be able to write it, but I'm trying anyway. Yes, this is my goldeneyed Mary Sue running through Midgar the way she ran through Ivalice, or rather, the way she will run through Ivalice . . .

This is the story she hinted at as background, as backstory, when asked about her past in Final Fantasy XII: A Traveler in a Strange World and to a lesser extent the in-progress sequel Ivalice Returning.

I would greatly appreciate any and all comments as I am struggling with trying to put this tale into words. I could certainly use the support.

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Final Fantasy VII: Beginnings

The soldier walked into the scientist's office with determination. The laboratories where the two men worked were secret, hidden in the labyrinthine chambers beneath the Manor in the rebuilt ruins of Nibelheim. The soldier didn't like having to speak to the scientist, he was a decidedly odd one to speak to, always hmming and muttering to himself, but he was a scientist, a brilliant one, and they were both employees of the great Shin-Ra Corporation.

And so, as much as he disliked the responsibility, he had to deal with the man, even though Doctor Hojo gave him the creeps.

"Doctor Hojo," he said as he entered, "I have something to report."

The doctor was looking at the shattered remains of what had been two containment units. Units which had only recently contained two experimental specimens, valuable ones at that. Their loss was not something he took lightly, even if one was a failure. "Hmm? What is it that you have to report, then?"

The soldier laid several pieces of paper on the desk which sat nearby, covered in books, some open, some just stacked one atop the other. "Our forces caught up with them just outside of Midgar. Subject A was killed, allowing Subject B to escape."

Hojo was silent for a moment before turning around to look at the soldier from behind his wire-framed glasses. "And Subject M?"

He couldn't help it. The soldier paled. "There were no survivors in the strike force which met up with them. One of them was carrying a recorder, but it was almost completely destroyed as well. We have only a small piece still intact."

He placed a disk on the desk. Hojo looked at the disk for a moment and then slid it calmly into a reading device. The screen lit up momentarily and then the picture cleared to show the chaos of a battlefield, men's voices screaming in terror. Two men were on the ground in the distance, both in SOLDIER blue, one lying prone, dying, the other kneeling next to him.

But what caught the attention was the fearsomely angelic being above them. Female, and blonde, her face caught in an expression of fury and grief, she lifted her hand and a burst of blue-white light erupted from her palm, streaking towards the camera. It struck and the screen went blank.

Hojo was silent as he pulled the disk from the reader and slid it into a protective device.

"It appears that Subject M was hiding things from me." Hojo looked at the disk in his hands for a moment. "Report to Shin-Ra that I will be sending a file to them soon." The soldier left and Hojo returned to his thoughts. It appeared that the girl might be just as valuable as his son.

---

Two former SOLDIERs staggered into the Midgar slums. At least, they looked like former SOLDIERs. They both wore the blue uniforms of the elite warriors of the Shin-Ra Corporation. One, the male, was wearing only one shoulder piece, though the other, the female, had both on. They were both blond of hair, his short and spiky, hers long and falling in waves except for the streak of white that ran through it, and they both stumbled as they walked.

It was something of an oddity to see a female SOLDIER. Shin-Ra didn't often hire women to join its military teams, but the odd one did make it through the training and the testing, so it wasn't like she would be immediately known as a single example or as a complete fraud for wearing the uniform, and for claiming the status.

They had both decided that they would be former SOLDIERs.

The male had glowing blue-green eyes like all those drenched in the magical Mako energy that Shin-Ra harvested to use for electricity to power homes and gadgets. Mako eyes, they were called, the mark of the SOLDIER. The female, though, the female was odd in that her eyes were not the glowing cyan color that his were. Her eyes were golden. Not yellow, not amber, they were the glowing color of liquid gold, shining like a new-minted coin.

Her face was pinched and painful as she helped her friend struggle to sit beside the train station near the Sector Seven slums.

"Well, Cloud," she murmured softly, "looks like we made it to Midgar, though I don't know where we'll go from here."

He met her eyes with his own, acknowledging her presence in a way that hadn't been possible not that long before. "We'll . . . be alright," he murmured, "you'll see."

She sighed. It didn't help that she was as emotionally malleable at that moment as he was. He was coming out of a very difficult poisoning. She . . . well, she had killed. And the pain of it was tearing her mind into pieces. She could not afford to go mad. She had been down that road once in her life; she was not going back there again.

She tried to stand again, but fell down beside him, all strength gone from her trembling legs. She was sinking into a full-fledged panic attack, and that wasn't going to help them at all if they were noticed.

A voice rang out, then, from across the way. "Cloud? Is that you?"

A young woman came running up to them, her long dark hair hung loose and she wore black shorts with suspenders over a white top that left her belly showing. She looked like she was the kind to defend herself, though, against unwanted attention. There was too much definition in the muscles in her arms and legs for her not to be practiced in some form of combat.

Her voice woke Cloud like nothing his friend had done. He looked up at her curiously. "Who?"

"Cloud, it's Tifa, can't you remember me?" She looked closely at him and then over at the other girl. "Who is this with you?"

The goldeneyed girl could see the instant assumption in Tifa's eyes. An assumption which was wrong, in all senses. She forced herself to her feet to meet the other girl. "I'm what you would call a war-buddy, I suppose. My name's Maracae. Cloud and me were in SOLDIER together, decided to get out together, go looking for an old childhood friend of his. Would you be the one?"

Tifa nodded, her eyes relaxing as she accepted the story. "So you made it to SOLDIER, Cloud?" She turned back to him.

Maracae could see him changing, and there wasn't anything she could do about it. Zack . . . Zack's last words to him had set this in motion. Cloud nodded, taking on some of the mannerisms she knew belonged to someone else. "Yeah, First Class, even."

Tifa looked at Maracae. "Are you . . . ?"

Maracae nodded. Might as well play this to the hilt. "Yeah, First Class too."

Cloud continued the story. "We're out, though, fed up with Shin-Ra. We're going to be mercenaries. Do the stuff others need doing, you know?"

Maracae sighed silently. It had been Zack's dream. Now . . . it belonged to Cloud, Zack's living legacy.

As it turned out, Tifa knew some people who needed help of just the sort two former SOLDIERs could provide.


	2. A Boulder to an Avalanche

Final Fantasy VII: A SOLDIER's Sister

Chapter Two: A Boulder to an Avalanche

The group was called Avalanche.

Maracae thought she had heard the name . . . before. It seemed like everything had changed for her that day in fire. There was her life Before. And there was survival After. Not that it mattered.

She was well and truly collapsing and she had to get control of it or she would be useless and then Avalanche would never believe that she had been SOLDIER with Cloud. She had to become someone new or the strain of the lives she had taken would eat away at her soul until she became no better than . . . than the one who had betrayed her.

All it took was a plea for help to Tifa and she was able to lock herself away in a room for several hours. She needed the time to concentrate, and to alter things.

When she finally emerged she wasn't the same person who had gone into the room, and she certainly didn't look the same.

The SOLDIER uniform was simple, and she kept the basic look, with alterations. She still wore the ribbed knit turtleneck tank top, and the belt with the suspenders, though she had pulled both metal pauldrons off and discarded them. The pants she had split up the inner seam and stitched over each other, so that it formed a skirt, and then had trimmed the skirt to sit longer than Tifa's shorts, but not all the way to her knees.

It left a lot of fabric sitting unused. For a moment she considered fashioning a cape out of the remainder, but then decided to set it aside for later. After a moment, though, she reconsidered.

It was nothing to fashion a brooch from her own mystical energy. She even made sure to include places to insert materia into the ornament. She took the remaining fabric by one corner and attached it at her shoulder with the brooch, a large rose in full bloom, and then she pulled the other corner around her back to the opposite hip and attached it there, under the belt, so that it hung across her back, shoulder to hip, like a cape.

Tifa looked at her and smiled. Marlene looked at her and laughed in delight. Barret's jaw might as well have hit the floor. Cloud met her eyes from across the room and simply nodded. He was changing, too, just not as visibly.

When Barret was able to pull himself back together, he called the meeting to order.

Avalanche sought to prevent the destruction of the Planet. It was a noble goal. But they stood in opposition to ShinRa Corporation, which made money extracting the magical energy that gave life to everything and turning it into electricity. But with the life of the Planet hanging in the balance were there no tactics that were forbidden?

So Avalanche was a terrorist organization.

Maracae repressed the sigh of sorrow. This was going to be difficult, but what choice did she have? She was bound to protect innocent life, bound so by mystical commands, but if ShinRa were not opposed, more innocent life would fall victim.

Barret wanted them to destroy one of the Mako Reactors that stood around the city of Midgar, pulling energy from deep in the Planet and turning it into electricity. And he needed the help of some former SOLDIERs to do it. Cloud insisted that they weren't doing anything without being paid, so Barret agreed to paying them, after the job was done.

With a nod, Cloud sealed the deal.

---

For safety and security, no trains in Midgar ran directly to the Reactors. Well, no trains that civilians could get on. So Avalanche simply stole one and redirected it. Maracae and Cloud rode atop the mechanical monstrosity as it rolled into the station adjacent to Reactor #1, their target.

Cloud quickly dispatched the guards while Maracae searched their bodies for anything usable. She was able to find a few Potions, but not much else. She felt the pain, but it was nothing compared to what she still felt from the death she had rained down following what had happened to Zack.

What was worse, what was terribly, awfully worse, was that she could feel the Madness pounding in the back of her mind. She couldn't afford to go mad again. She had gone mad once, and had dreamed up people around her who had never been so that when the Madness was taken from her . . . they vanished like the fading of a dream, leaving her alone again. Waking from the Madness was perhaps the cruelest thing which could have happened to her, and she didn't want to have to face that terrible dawn again.

In fact, it was waking from the Madness which had led her to this place. In running from the memory, she had run directly into the path of a nightmare she never saw coming. Five years as an unwilling assistant and part time lab-rat before their escape.

But they had escaped, the three of them. Now it was just her and Cloud, and she would be damned to Hell itself before she let the Madness overtake her again.

Once inside the Reactor they ran into mostly automated opponents, and those she could defeat easily enough. A machine had no self-awareness to torment her with its fading. Barret decided to stay with them, and he wasn't a slouch in the fighting, either.

The Reactor Core was protected by a giant mechanical scorpion. Setting the charges on the core set the guardian on them. After defeating the mecha, they had to run for the exit before the place came down around them.

Once outside the Reactor they took separate paths to the train that they would ride back to the slums. Maracae nodded to Cloud silently before she went her own way. Somehow, they'd find their way back to each other.

In fact, that knowledge was her only consolation when she was on the train with the rest of Avalanche, and Cloud hadn't caught back up with them yet. Barret was fuming and trying not to worry while the others wondered if he had gone down fighting. Maracae knew what it was to watch a man go down fighting, helpless to aid him, helpless to prevent what was happening . . . She fought away the memories, knew them for the Madness trap that they were.

Zack was a hero and, like more heroes than some cared to admit, he had died as he had lived. Heroically.

There was a loud thump overhead and then Cloud jumped down into the car from above. Maracae had to smile. He was even developing Zack's flair for the dramatic.

The rest of the ride back to Sector Seven was uneventful.

---

Back in the bar, Maracae saw what had delayed Cloud's return to the rest of the group. She just didn't know where he had managed to find a flower in Midgar, of all places. With a sad smile he offered the bloom to Tifa and she accepted it in delight.

Then the group started planning for their next big mission.

Cloud almost didn't join up for it. He was heading out the door when Tifa stopped him. Maracae didn't know, really, what to do. She was friends with Cloud, and she really didn't like Avalanche's methods, but she wasn't certain that abandoning them was the best path to follow. Still, her loyalty was to her friends, and right then, that was Cloud.

So it was probably a good thing that Tifa talked Cloud into staying with Avalanche. Admittedly her method of choice was rather low, reminding him of an old promise to be her protector, but Maracae had to give the girl credit. Use what works.

It worked. Cloud was in for another mission, and Maracae, too.

This would be another Reactor strike, against #5 this time, and Tifa was coming along with them.

* * *

Sorry it took so long to get this chapter up. I'm still not real happy with it, but I'm just not real certain where to work on it. *sigh* I could use some feedback of some sort. In any event, the next section will be the Reactor #5. Hopefully that one won't read so much like a strategy guide walkthrough.


End file.
